Last week, the Australian Academy of Science held their annual meeting in Canberra, and the final day’s event was focused on energy technology. The symposium was called “Power to the people: the science behind the debate“. I was invited as one of the speakers, to discuss next-generation nuclear power technologies and their role in decarbonising our fossil-focused economy.

The description of my talk, as it appeared in the programme, is as follows:

Abstract: Next-generation nuclear energy – including advanced fission reactors, fusion-fission hybrids and pure hydrogen-fusion designs – offers a means to produce vast quantities of zero-carbon and reliable electricity and process heat. For fission, new designs that are now ready for commercial demonstration can take advantage of the superior physical properties of plutonium in a fast neutron spectrum to convert essentially all of the mined uranium into useful fissile material and abundant electricity.

The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) and similar ‘Generation IV designs’ can change in a fundamental way the outlook for global energy on the necessary massive scale. These resource extension properties multiply the amount of usable fuel by a factor of over a hundred, allowing demand to be met for many centuries with fuel already at hand, by a technology that is known today, and whose properties are largely established. Demonstrating a credible and acceptable way to safely recycle used nuclear fuel will also clear a socially acceptable pathway for nuclear fission to be a major low-carbon and sustainable energy source for this century.

For fusion, there are exciting medium- to long-term prospects, based on work now being done on the International Thermonuclear Reactor Experiment (ITER) and on hybrid fusion-fission designs that use molten-salt coolants and use thorium and hydrogen isotopes as fuel.

Replacement of fossil fuels is urgently needed to sustain global society whilst mitigating environmental impacts, and sustainable forms of nuclear energy offer a realistic and effective way of achieving this goal.

Bio: Barry Brook is a Professor and ARC Future Fellow at the University of Adelaide’s Environment Institute, where he holds the Sir Hubert Wilkins Chair of Climate Change. He has published three books, over 200 refereed scientific papers, and regularly writes popular articles for the media. His awards include the 2006 Australian Academy of Science Fenner Medal and the 2010 Community Science Educator of the Year. His research focuses on the causes and consequences of extinction, analysis of energy systems for carbon mitigation, and simulation models of the synergies of human impacts on the biosphere.

Here is the HD recording of my talk – recorded professionally by the Academy, which includes many close ups of my slides. The talk runs for 28 minutes, followed by 5 minutes of questions. I trust you will find it useful, and be sure to pass on the link so that others can watch it and be more informed – and entertained!

There were a wide range of talks presented, generally of high quality, and many of which were also recorded. The full video cast can be viewed here. Below is the programme:

Friday 31 May
Annual symposium
Power to the people: the science behind the debate

Improving human well-being on a resource-limited planet – can we do it?Professor Sir David King FRS FAAS
Chancellor, University of Liverpool, former Director, Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford and former UK Chief Scientist.

Until they get at least engineering breakeven they are useless, we need something now, not when someone finally gets fusion to work and right now fission is all we’ve got (and this means LWRs, though IFRs and LFTRs are close enough to proven that we could be pretty confident they’d be ready within the decade if we wanted them, that can not be said for anything to do with fusion with the notable exception of Project PACER).

Many of them also look to me like snakeoil (claims we can do Boron fusion certainly should set off alarm bells as should the idea that ICF is better done by hitting the fuel on one side instad of all around).

Personally whilst I suspect fusion will be able to do the job of electricity production it not turn out to be any better than advanced nuclear (e.g. LFTR), rocketry is where fusion would really come into its own and would be worth developing the tech even if we knew it would be useless for making electricity.

I watched Barry’s talk, but the picture (one of his slides) stayed the same after the 12.13 mark. But putting the mouse cursor at the bottom after that point did reveal a very small changing picture. Did anyone else have this problem? Can it be fixed?

ITER is likely the most expensive fusion scheme, outdated, ill-conceived, and hard to get break-even. There are other more advanced fusion concepts that should be scrutinized before wasting billion euros on the ITER gargantuan project. http://tinyurl.com/neutron-free